Appendix B: The Creator-Endorsed Mark

The Creator-Endorsed Mark (questioncopyright.org/creator_endorsed) is a visual seal by which consumers can see which distribution channels are endorsed by an artist. When artists release their work for everyone to copy freely, they often still favor certain distribution sources, and the Creator-Endorsed Mark — which is enforced by trademark law not copyright law — is a way to reliably inform the public of those preferences:

The Creator-Endorsed Mark leverages the fact that audience members want to feel that they are supporting the artist, and just need clear, recognizable signals from the artist about what constitutes support. In standard publishing arrangements, there is no place for this information, and people are often shocked to learn how small the artist's percentage is in most publishing contracts, particularly in the music industry. The Creator-Endorsed Mark rewards publishers for sharing more revenue with artists (by giving those publishers a sales advantage), while not tying an artist exclusively to one publisher. Variants of the mark offer the artist and distributor ways to be specific about how much profit is being shared:

By giving distributors a standard way to indicate their relationship with the artist, the mark allows audiences to make better choices. But the Creator-Endorsed Mark project has another goal as well. While its direct function is to give artists a tool for making commercial use of their "moral monopoly" without preventing their works from spreading freely, its indirect function is to separate attribution concerns from copyright concerns — that is, to show that accurate crediting is easy to maintain without controlling copying.

A generic version of the mark is available for situations where the distributor just wants to show that they have the artist's general approval (which the distributor must actually obtain in order to use any version of the mark). It is also useful for situations where the artists' approval is being granted for non-monetary reasons, for example in political campaigns.

To help the mark to gain widespread acceptance, we will work with other organizations that also promote artist-friendly distribution, concentrating especially on merchandisers whose best interest is served by being seen as aligned with artists.

(TODO: show that the mark is already in commercial use)

Outputs:

• Scalable versions of the mark, including all variants.
• Clear guidelines for use of the mark(s).
• A landing page to link to, for distributors who display the mark.
• Merchandisers using the mark in commerce.
• A repeatable strategy for approaching new merchandisers, and for enabling artists to do the same.
• Signs that the mark and the ideas behind it are being recognized and understood. In addition to use by merchandisers, we will look for blog posts and articles to confirm this, coordinating with the Media Watch Project (see below).